An Æ as of L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi

Fantastic coins, I would be happy to welcome either of them into my collection.

 

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Thanks, it is a prominent sprue. Red's coin has some interesting sprue remnants at 1h on the reverse. I like when our coins display some of their manufacturing secrets. For example, I love the frequently encountered Republican bronzes with misaligned obv/rev casting molds.

 

Curious: I have been involved in plastics molding, cast iron, cast aluminums, investment casting, and several other manufacturing for 40 years... I noticed in numismatics, everyone calls them sprues (the small protuberance on a coin).

We would call the protuberance on the coin a GATE, as this is the area where the metal (or plastic) would enter the mold (of the coin). The SPRUE was the actual runner or long metal piece (the channel where the metal flowed) that lead to the gate into the mold. When the runner (or channel) hardened during cooling, that was called the sprue.

 

This coin from the ANS collection is a reverse(and possibly obverse but I didn't take the time to verify) die match to mine though again, the "F" is not noted(not surprising as it's not as prominent). This seems to confirm that this is a legitimate variety as opposed to the result of tooling or corrosion.